Weather The Storm
by KittyCallum
Summary: Yet another Welton thunderstorm! It's true, we do like those. The Poets hold a meeting during which a storm of unexpected proportions hits.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: I began this after hearing about the tendency for DPS stories to feature storms ... I thought about how amazing a thunderstorm would look on the grounds of Welton and this is what happened.

Todd didn't know why they hadn't made a break for it while they still could, before the rain had been driven so hard by the wind that it was almost going sideways and the trees had started contorting wildly, their leaves a mass of shivering silver. The lake was black with pelting rain, the clouds above it dark as soot and lit only by the jagged bolts of lightning. In the brief silence of a split-second, he could almost smell the ozone, but it was not for long - thunder came, not the quiet, distant rumbles they often heard on early autumn nights, but the present, all-obliterating crack and roar. It was sometimes the sound of a slaver's whip, sometimes the fall of alpine avalanches - but it was never quiet.

Neil looked overjoyed at the night outside - no surprises there. It had been a brutally hot day. Every last boy in Welton had spent the afternoon, as Latin dragged on and no end seemed in sight, gazing mournfully out at the lake, idly fanning themselves with a book. It had been a blessed joy to get to English class and find Mr Keating, looking just as uncomfortably hot as they, smiling ruefully at them from the desk where he sat with the curtains shut and the windows open. "I'm going to make it an easy lesson today, boys," he told them. "I know none of you are paying attention, I only ask that if anyone feels the need to swoon from the heat, that you kindly do it near a relatively soft surface." That the students were on the brink of mass stupor was a fact that all of the teachers knew, but only Keating cared or noticed enough to acknowledge.

The lesson passed in a fairly leisurely way. Charlie, who had given up early on trying for concentration, had been coping by carrying a water gun around and occasionally squirting himself with it. Keating allowed this by turning a blind eye: after all, it was far from the worst way he could have handled the weather. It was only when Charlie took to squirting Cameron in the pretense that he was helping that Keating had decided to make him get up and read.

Finally, they'd been allowed to go. It was Friday, and though ordinarily Neil's first thought would have been of the meeting, at that time he was as deliriously focused on cooling off by any means possible as the others. When they had reached the dormitories, he and Charlie, in a moment of incredible synchronisation, had gone straight to their drawers in search of swimming trunks. Knox quickly cottoned on and went for his; soon, all the boys had twigged to the idea. For the next two hours they had swum and splashed, taking advantage of the one opportunity the day had offered them to wake up a little. After hours of dull, heat-infused classes, they were all ready to seize whatever was left of the day. The session had only ended when Knox, in a surprisingly fearless act, had climbed the tree near the bank and dived out of it, very nearly killing himself by falling on the bank. The copious quantities of water that had been splashed onto it by the others prevented him from sustaining any major injuries; nonetheless, he spent the rest of the afternoon with a bit of a limp.

After that, they'd noticed the sun sinking lower, and decided to leave before anyone really got hurt. It was also almost dinnertime, and if they missed that, it would be a very unpleasant evening. Sure, they all regularly swiped snacks from the cafeteria, but they didn't want the reprimand that came with missing a meal. The meeting was tonight as usual, and that kept them all a little more cheerful - and prevented too much petty bickering from breaking out.

While the Poets had been eating in the grand Welton dining hall, the clouds had built. While they had hurried to their rooms and put on coats and blazers, the wind had picked up and started whistling through the trees. And when the Poets finally stepped out the door, heading stealthily down towards the old Indian cave, it was not quite so warm a night anymore and there was an electric crackle in the air and it wasn't raining _yet_.

Only once they reached the cave had the clouds opened and poured out a flood with a crack of thunder to break the sky.


	2. Chapter 2

Note: I must apologise for the candle business. There's admittedly no evidence in the film that there are ever candles in the cave, but I wrote them into my last story and they've stuck. Rather fast I'm afraid. My explanation for it is that the candle thing started at Halloween, in my last story, and instead of taking the candles they'd brought they just left them in the cave, and lit them at the next meeting. It's the best I can do.

And so they'd come to this, this ridiculous situation with all seven of them stranded in the cave. Somehow the candles and flashlights had held up nicely, but the wind was getting cold and it was almost midnight. The initial poetic exhilaration over a meeting held in a raging tempest now reduced, they were beginning to wonder how they were ever going to leave.

"It's not letting up." Knox stuck a hand out of the cave mouth, then an entire arm, which he soon regretted as his sleeve became a minor body of water. "I don't think we can make it back to the school." It was a long enough walk that none of them were eager to risk it.

Charlie scoffed and gave the others a disbelieving stare. Gesturing at the storm outside, he noted, "It's not going to get any worse. Give it a few minutes. We'll be able to get back before dawn without drowning."

This statement was given very little credence when a bough came crashing from a nearby tree onto the ground before them. Meeks jumped back with a cry of alarm, and Todd nearly dropped the candle he was holding - as it was he spilled a hot stream of wax over his hand. Charlie quickly stopped talking. The matter was dropped.

"I don't know how we're going to get anywhere in this," Neil muttered, then reopened the book. "Who cares, anyway? It's Saturday tomorrow - remember?" He flipped through a few pages and came to rest on The Wreck of the Hesperus. "What do you say we extend the meeting?"

Agreement all round. Neil started reading and, when he had finished, passed the book to Knox, who was next. In the flickering flashlight beams he flipped through the pages in search of something appropriately dramatic. Somehow he felt that the only poem that would do tonight would be one that could be yelled over the sound of the storm.

"So we're just gonna sit here reading poetry until this ends?" Cameron's was the first voice to show uncertainty. He had the book in his lap but was ignoring it, red hair turned coppery in the candlelight but his face screwed up into a sneer. Neil had expected him to speak up earlier, with his concern for regulations. But now he gave a resigned sigh and readied his best efforts to talk reason.

"If you'd rather go out there and drown, get struck by lightning, run into a tree, fall down a vole nest, slide into the lake ... " Charlie, unfortunately, had gotten there first, and was still listing off ways that Cameron could get himself killed when Meeks cut him off.

"Look, the storm's not gonna last forever. What's worse - staying out late tonight or ruining your shoes, your uniform and your coat by walking back to the school in this?"

It did the trick. Meeks had struck a chord with Cameron that few ever bothered to appeal to, the pragmatic side that had the regard for order and structure tempered by the instinct to do what genuinely made sense.

" ... you could always try and see what happens," Charlie added in a low voice, and Cameron opened his mouth to retort, but closed it just as quickly when the lightning speared out across the thunderheads.

There was complete silence in the cave for a minute, and then a scramble for the exit to see what damage had been done. It was chaos for a few moments.

"That struck nearby!"

"Wonder if we can see what it hit?"

"Bet it was that tree by the river!"

"Let's hope it hit the school!"

The rain was ignored for the moment, the wind forgotten. Everyone was struggling to get a good view of the lightning. In the darkness it was impossible to see if anything had been struck, but the shadows made for good possibilities, each jagged and blackened tree looked like charcoal. It was the biggest storm any of them had seen in a long time; thunderstorms at Welton tended to be subdued affairs that struck at convenient times and blew away as quickly as they had blown in, as though they too deigned the school's regimented timetables as being worthy of their obedience.

Tonight's storm was as far from tame and controlled as they had ever seen. Never before had the lightning and thunder struck so close together, each flash accompanied instantly by its round.

In a short time they were all clustered back into the cave, most of them utterly soaked. Charlie, who had been leaning out as far as he could to get a better view, had mud up to his elbows where he had been deep in the mire outside. Knox looked like he'd been swimming again. Shaking the rain from his hair, he accidentally drenched the mostly-dry Pitts.

If they had been unsure of their odds of returning, the brief look outside had remedied that. Even Cameron sat in tacit agreement to stay as long as necessary.

For a few hours, or maybe only one - no one could tell - they read, told stories, and eventually just fell to talking about everything and nothing, as well as a few things in between. Slowly, so slowly that it was barely even perceptible, the shouts of laughter and quick chatter subsided to occasional amused chuckles, and a voice that had been debating the merits of dirty limericks one minute would be an unintelligible murmur the next, until, at last, all was silence.


End file.
